DEV Community: Rohit Malhotra

Most AI Meeting Tools Store Your Transcripts as Plain Text. I Built One That Doesn't.

Rohit Malhotra — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:58:09 +0000

Most AI Meeting Tools Store Your Transcripts as Plain Text. I Built One That Doesn't.

AI meeting assistants have become incredibly good over the past year.

They can transcribe conversations, answer questions during meetings, summarize action items, and even coach you during interviews.

But while trying a bunch of them, I kept wondering about one question that surprisingly few products talk about:

Who can actually read my meeting history?

For most AI meeting tools, transcripts, notes, titles, and chat history are stored as ordinary plaintext in a database. They're encrypted while being transmitted and while sitting on disk, but once the application needs to read them, they're decrypted on the server.

That's a perfectly common architecture.

It just wasn't one I wanted for my own meetings.

So while building Observer, I decided to solve a different problem first:

What if the server never stored readable meeting history in the first place?

The problem with meeting AI

Modern meeting assistants are becoming your second brain.

They remember:

interviews
customer calls
salary discussions
design reviews
roadmap planning
legal conversations

That's a huge amount of sensitive information.

Yet most of us barely think about where all of it ends up.

After using several products, I realized I cared less about whether AI could summarize my meeting...

...and more about who could browse those summaries later.

Building Private Vault

Observer stores meeting history.

It has to.

Otherwise features like searching previous meetings or asking follow-up questions wouldn't work.

The difference is how it's stored.

Before meeting data is written to the database, it's encrypted on your Mac using AES-256-GCM.

That includes:

meeting titles
transcripts
meeting notes
AI conversations

The encryption key comes from your passphrase.

That passphrase never leaves your device.

The server stores ciphertext—not readable meeting content.

So instead of saying

"Trust us, we won't look."

the architecture is closer to

"We couldn't casually look even if we wanted to."

Of course, there are practical limitations.

Some metadata still needs to remain accessible so the product can work:

account email
subscription status
meeting duration
usage statistics

And whenever AI needs to answer a question or generate notes, the meeting is temporarily decrypted, processed, and immediately encrypted again.

I think that's a much more honest privacy story than claiming everything is magically "end-to-end encrypted."

AI without another meeting participant

The second thing that bothered me was meeting bots.

Most assistants join Zoom or Meet as another attendee.

Someone inevitably asks:

"Who's that?"

Observer doesn't join the meeting.

It listens through your Mac's system audio, so it works with:

Zoom
Google Meet
Teams
Slack
Discord
Webex
browser-based meetings

No participant.

No calendar integration.

No special setup.

Live assistance instead of post-meeting summaries

Most products shine after the meeting is over.

I wanted help while I was still talking.

Observer supports different actions depending on what you need:

Answer → generate a quick reply from the conversation
Assist → combine transcript with what's on your screen
Recap → summarize the last few minutes
Screen Analysis → explain whatever is currently visible
Chat → ask follow-up questions naturally

The live transcript becomes the AI's working memory instead of disappearing into a summary afterward.

One feature I didn't expect to love

After every meeting, Observer stores:

transcript
notes
AI conversations

The feature I use the most isn't actually AI.

It's clicking a note and jumping directly to the exact moment in the transcript where that topic was discussed.

Instead of wondering:

"Didn't we decide this two weeks ago?"

I can immediately find the original conversation.

Small feature.

Huge quality-of-life improvement.

Notion support

I didn't want another knowledge base.

Most of my documentation already lives in Notion.

Observer simply lets me export meeting notes into an existing Notion page or database whenever I want.

Meeting history stays encrypted inside Observer.

Notion remains my long-term workspace.

Observer vs. Cluely

People naturally compare Observer with Cluely, and I think they're solving similar—but not identical—problems.

Cluely has built a much larger brand and offers a polished AI overlay experience across multiple platforms.

Observer focuses on a slightly different set of priorities.

Feature	Observer	Cluely
Meeting bot required	No	No
Device-side encrypted meeting history	✅ Private Vault	Focuses on encryption in transit and at rest
Live transcript	Always visible	Available, but less central to the workflow
Notion export	Built in	Public integrations focus more on CRM/ATS
AI workflow	Separate Answer, Assist and Recap actions	More unified assistant experience
Undetectability	Included in paid plans	Higher-tier plans emphasize this capability
Platforms	macOS today, Windows coming	macOS and Windows

Neither approach is objectively better.

If you're looking for a mature AI assistant with a broader ecosystem, Cluely is a strong choice.

If you're someone who cares about where meeting history lives, who can read it, and wants encryption to be part of the product architecture—not just a security page—then Observer may be worth a look.

Why I built it

I didn't build Observer because the world needed another AI meeting assistant.

I built it because I wanted one that I would actually trust with my own conversations.

AI is getting incredibly good.

The next differentiator won't just be model quality.

It'll be how responsibly we handle the information users trust us with.

I'd love to hear how others are approaching this.

If you're building AI products:

How are you thinking about user data and privacy?

I built Observer an AI meeting companion that doesn't join your calls

Rohit Malhotra — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 14:49:54 +0000

I built an AI meeting companion that doesn't join your calls

For the last few months, I've been obsessed with one question.

Why does every AI meeting assistant need to join the meeting as another participant?

Whether it's interviews, customer calls, sales demos or team meetings, most tools either record everything with a bot or focus only on transcription.

I wanted something different.

So I built Observer.

An AI companion that runs locally on your Mac, understands your meeting in real time, helps when you need it, and never joins the call.

Why I built it

I spend a lot of time in meetings.

Sometimes it's technical discussions.

Sometimes interviews.

Sometimes product planning.

Sometimes client calls.

Most AI assistants interrupt the experience. They join the meeting, announce themselves, and often make everyone aware they're recording.

I wanted something that simply stays with me and helps only when I ask.

That became Observer.

What Observer does

Observer continuously listens to your meeting and builds context in real time.

Whenever you need help, it's already caught up.

Some of the features include:

🎙 Live speech recognition

Observer transcribes conversations in real time with low latency.

No waiting until the meeting ends.

💬 AI Answers

Need help answering a question?

Observer uses the live conversation to generate contextual responses instantly.

Great for interviews, sales calls, customer support, brainstorming or technical discussions.

🖥 Screen understanding

Sometimes the answer isn't in the conversation.

It's on your screen.

Observer can understand both your screen and the live meeting context together before generating a response.

📝 Smart meeting notes

Instead of generic summaries, Observer generates notes based on the type of meeting.

Whether it's:

Interview
Technical discussion
Sales call
Team meeting
Lecture
Recruiting

…the recap adapts accordingly.

🌍 Multiple languages

Meetings don't always happen in English.

Observer works across multiple languages, making it useful for global teams.

🎧 Accent recognition

Different accents often confuse transcription systems.

Observer is designed to better understand diverse accents, helping improve transcript quality and AI responses.

⌨ Keyboard-first workflow

No need to keep switching windows.

Everything can be triggered with shortcuts while you're working.

🕵️ Undetectable Mode

This was one of the biggest requests from users.

Observer stays with you without joining your meeting as another participant.

No bots entering your call.

No "AI Assistant has joined the meeting."

Just your workspace.

Pricing

I also wanted pricing that made sense.

Observer currently has two plans:

Pro

$25/month
Unlimited meetings
20 hours/month

Max

$50/month
Unlimited meetings
40 hours/month

An alternative to expensive AI companions

Recently, several AI meeting tools have significantly increased pricing for premium features.

One example is Cluely's $150/month plan that includes its undetectability features.

If you're mainly looking for a private AI meeting companion with real-time assistance, meeting notes, screen understanding and live transcription, Observer offers a much more affordable alternative.

Built with developers in mind

Under the hood, Observer combines:

Real-time speech recognition
Live AI reasoning
Screen understanding
Context-aware responses
Fast keyboard workflows

The biggest challenge wasn't building AI.

It was making everything feel instant enough that it could actually be useful during a live conversation.

Try it

You can learn more here:

🌐 https://getobserver.app

🎥 Watch the demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfMlR_FFfgA

🚀 Product Hunt:
https://www.producthunt.com/products/observer-4?launch=observer-5

Launch discount

To celebrate the launch, I'm offering 20% off for the first 100 users.

Use code:

FIRST100

I'd genuinely love feedback from developers.

What feature would make an AI meeting companion actually useful for you?

I'm especially interested in hearing from engineers, recruiters, founders and people who spend a large part of their day in meetings.